by Amy Vansant
Sean scrambled to the straw mattress and snatched the boy into his arms, pressing him against his chest. Even in the smoky room he could smell the sweet scent of the boy’s soft hair. His head spun with memories of holding his newborn son.
The pride he’d felt.
Still crouching, Sean ran outside. He set Broch on the ground a safe distance from the fire and glanced towards where he’d left Thorn’s man. The bastard and his horse were gone.
Good.
The craven wretch might have played possum or he might have awoken. It didn’t matter now. There would be time later to hunt him and his friend like the dogs they were. For now, he didn’t have to worry for the boy’s safety.
Sean ran back inside the cottage and dropped to his knees beside Isobel.
He grabbed her hands and she pulled against him. “Broch—”
“He’s safe.” Sean coughed and again tried to gather her in his arms. His wife had rolled on her back since he’d left her. He saw her stomach was scarlet with blood. She’d been run through. The size of the wound...he didn’t know how she’d survived a second after the blade left her flesh.
But I do know.
She’d needed to save Broch from the fire. She couldn’t die until he was safe.
Isobel’s lids fluttered open as he gripped her shoulders, preparing to drag her out.
She grabbed his arm.
“Ryft?”
He paused, stunned she had recognized him, calling him by a name he hadn’t heard in so long. To hear it spoken in her voice, broke his heart.
She squeezed his hand and smiled before her features fell slack. Her grip on his fingers released.
“Isobel.”
Taking a deep breath, he grabbed her arms and stood, his head engulfed by smoke. He jerked her towards the door as a beam from the roof slipped, dumping the flaming thatch on him. He raised his arms, shielding Isobel with his body. The burning embers melted through his shirt, stinging his flesh like a swarm of angry wasps. Seized by a racking cough, he found it impossible to see through his watering eyes. He struggled to find his wife’s arms again. Just as his fingertips located her flesh, something bumped into his back, blocking his path to the door.
“Leave her,” said a low voice.
Sean ignored the man and gripped his wife’s arms tighter. The heat intensified. A timber fell from the ceiling and landed where his boy had lain a moment before.
He was out of time.
The man slipped his hands under Sean’s armpits and jerked him towards the door, forcing him to lose his grip on Isobel.
“No!”
Sean fought to break free but the man held him in a head lock, pulling him off his feet and dragging him towards the door. He thrashed, heels sliding across the floor, growing ever farther from the body of his wife.
“Stop!” he barked the words between coughs. His head swam, his breath coming in short insufficient gasps.
They crossed the threshold of the cottage and Sean felt his heels sink into the ground. The man dragged him another ten feet before dropping him to the dirt.
Sean rolled on his stomach and rose to his hands and knees, coughing, his nose clogged with ash.
He tried to speak, but found it impossible.
“Stop trying to talk. Just breathe, man.”
Sean twisted, trying to crawl back towards the house, eyes blinded by smoke and pain. The man pushed him with what felt like his foot, toppling him to his side.
“Catch your breath, you dumb bastard. She’s dead. Stop already.”
Sean shook his head, his chest heaving as he tried to breathe.
He heard the roof of the cottage give way behind him.
Too late.
He’d traveled nearly three hundred years for a second chance and he’d been too late.
Still blinded by tears and convulsions, he tried to scream at the man but the words caught in his throat.
Throwing out a hand, he squeezed a clump of peat in his fingers and tried to claw his way towards the cottage.
“Sean. Stop.”
Another racking cough made Sean curl as he fought for air.
He managed a gulp of breath and used it as a base for calming himself, pulling and pushing small sips of oxygen until his coughing subsided. Rocking to a sitting position, he watched his cottage engulfed by flames through squinted, watery eyes.
“Isobel,” he whispered, not daring yet to speak at full voice. His lungs felt as if they were filled with attic insulation.
The man who’ pulled him from the fire crouched in front of him, wiping the soot from his eyes with enormous thumbs, even as Sean fought to stop him.
“Leave me alone,” he croaked.
He pulled away, squinting, until the man’s head blocked the glow of the hazy sun and his features melted into view.
Sean could only wheeze the name.
“Luther?”
Chapter Sixteen
Broch walked outside and paused to scan the surrounding area. Heat radiated from the parked cars in wavy lines, softening the edges of everything baking beneath the relentless desert sun.
He made a clicking noise with the corner of his mouth.
Whit a hell-scape this place is.
Devoid of life, the world around him throbbed like a wound.
He felt the tip of a rifle poke his back.
Lifeless, bit fer the eejit poking the gun intae mah ribs.
A trill ran through the muscles in his back, taut like the strings of a harp.
Ah’m goan tae enjoy this.
He took another step before the gunman poked the back of his arm. “Turn around.”
Broch did as he was prompted. The man leaned his face closer.
“What are you smiling at, moron?”
Broch thrust his hands into his pockets and shrugged. “Ah’m juist a happy laddie.”
The man spat. “If I were you I wouldn’t be smiling.”
Broch grinned a little more broadly and nodded to the building “She admitted she loues me. At the end there. Did ye hear it? Ah tellt her afore and now she’s tellt me.”
The man scoffed. “Lot of good that bitch’s love is going to do you now. Take a look at your new home.” He motioned behind Broch with the gun.
Broch turned to the van behind him and tilted his head to peer inside. The bodies of the two workers lay there, partially stacked on each other. Plastic lined the floor of the van beneath them, as if the killers had always known the van would be used for transporting bodies.
Broch shook his head and mumbled. “Ye didnae hae tae kill them.”
“What?”
Still turned towards the van, Broch took a step back towards the gunman, mumbling a poem he recalled from schooling with his friend Gavin in Scotland.
“Come hither, hither, bonny fly, with the pearl ‘n’ silver wing—”
The ground behind him crunched as the gunman took a step forward. “Dude, I can’t understand a word you’re say—”
Broch knew what the crunching sand meant.
He’ll hae a foot oot, ‘n’ the gun oot, ready tae poke me in mah back—
Broch dropped to a squat and spun, striking the side of the man’s knee with the back of his curled fist. With a sucking pop the joint gave way. Above his head the gun fired a single shot as the man yelped in pain.
The shot masked his cry and Broch kept his advantage. No reinforcements came running.
As the gunman folded to the ground like a faulty tent, Broch pounced, covering his mouth with his hand. His crippled foe’s arms flailed, clawing at Broch’s neck, fighting to wrestle free. The Highlander flopped back to a sitting position on the ground, jerking the man’s head into his lap.
The man’s arm reached down and Broch saw his hand wrap around a knife strapped to his thigh. In a moment, that knife would be headed his way.
With a sharp twist, he turned the gunman’s neck until he heard the muffled pop of his spine crack. The man fell limp in his arms. The knife and the hand wrapped around
it, fell to the sand.
Broch stood, allowing the man to slide from his lap to the dust. He wiped his hands against each other and bent at the waist, grabbing the dead man by his shirt and pant leg. With a swinging heave, he lifted and tossed the lifeless body beside the workers in the van, sorry those two unfortunate men would have to spend such intimate time with their killer. He closed the doors, pressing them shut with a muffled click.
Broch picked up the gun. He stared at the warehouse door calculating his next move.
Inside, he heard voices growing louder.
Na time. Someone’s comin’.
Broch scrambled around the side of the van and pressed his back against it, studying the gun to be sure this time he’d know how it worked should he need to use it. The design was a far cry from the pistols and shotguns he’d used back in Scotland and only vaguely similar to the handguns Catriona carried.
He silently wrote learn hae tae use big guns on his mental to-do list.
The nose of a black car rolled around the corner of the warehouse and Broch shifted toward the front of the van to find a better hiding spot. He poked his head out just far enough to watch as Volkov exited the building. Another soldier led Catriona and Mo at gunpoint into the back of the long black car. Volkov entered behind them. The car seemed unusually long to Broch, and he guessed quite a few people could fit into the back of it.
He looked at his stolen gun.
I cannae risk it.
To start firing an unfamiliar weapon at armed men when Catriona lay in danger’s way, that wasn’t an option.
Frustrated, Broch flattened himself against the van as the black car rolled away, taking Catriona with it. Two more men had departed the building and the goons now stood together, talking and smoking as if they were in no hurry to leave.
Broch moved back to the passenger side of the van. Wincing for fear of noise, he eased his fingers under the latch and opened the door. He crawled inside, doing his best to stay silent and keep the van from bouncing. Contorting his legs and back he slid into the driver’s seat and released the breath he’d been holding since opening the door.
He ran through a list in his head.
Turn the key.
He checked and found the key hanging in the ignition.
Sae that’s guid.
He wrapped his fingers around the key.
“Hey, where’s Gino?” said one of the men behind the van.
Time tae gae.
Broch turned the key.
“There he is.”
Broch glanced in the side view mirror and caught the eye of one of the men. The man’s expression puckered.
Na. Ah’m nae Gino.
Broch put the car into drive and stomped on the gas and the man behind him pointed.
“Hey, that’s not Gino!” He threw down his cigarette and lunged forward.
The van’s wheels turned on the loose dirt and then caught, jumping the van forward. Broch heard the henchman yelling as he wrestled the beast of a vehicle under control and tore away from them.
A gunshot perforated the back of the van as Broch ducked and swerved. The second, third and fourth missed, but he heard the clank of a fifth as it ripped through the back of the vehicle.
Broch made a wide U-turn and realized he’d have to drive past the men to get to the road.
What was it that Catriona liked to say in situations like this?
Bummer.
The word made him laugh.
Sliding towards the floor, he pointed the van at the men and pressed the pedal. Driving blind, he turned the wheel left and right, weaving towards them as they opened fire. The front of the van clanked with the sound of bullets riddling the engine. The bullets stopped right before he heard a meaty thud.
That wis nae bullet.
Broch peeked from his hiding place. Only the road lay ahead of him now. He glanced in the mirror and saw one man on the ground, the other leaning over him. Broch reasoned he’d clipped one. It was a lucky break, now the remaining gunman was too busy helping his friend to fill the back of the van with additional bullets.
Broch raced down the dirt road leading to the main highway.
Ahead of him, the long black car had made its turn onto the asphalt. He followed, curving onto the street without pausing. He hoped to follow them to their destination, and stayed back so they couldn’t see it was him behind the wheel and not their hired hands.
His quarry had only driven a mile when the black car slowed and pulled to the side of the road to stop.
Broch slowed as well, remaining in the middle of the road.
Whyfur wid they dae that?
Two men stepped out of the back of the long car, guns drawn.
Shite.
Ah fergot aboot the infernal phanes.
The men he’d left behind had no doubt called the men in the black car, warning them they’d lost the van.
Shite. Shite. Shite.
Broch slammed the van into reverse with a screeching of tires as a spray of bullets headed his way. He’d stopped far enough back that only a few reached their destination. He was grateful, because he suspected the van’s engine looked something like Swiss cheese. He didn’t know very much about modern automobiles, but felt sure only a miracle was keeping him moving now.
Clear of the bullets’ reach, he turned and roared in the opposite direction.
When the black car was nothing more than a dot on the horizon, he slowed the van to a halt, waiting to see if they came after him. They didn’t. They didn’t go back to pick up their men, either. They must have continued, headed for whatever place they’d always planned to go.
Broch ran both hands through his hair.
Whit dae ah dae noo?
He needed to go back. He needed to follow the long black car and find out where they were taking Catriona.
But that would be impossible. They’d know it was him. They’d shoot at him again, or worse, do something to harm the women. The last thing they would do is lead him to their hideout.
He squeezed his eyes shut, thinking. When he opened them again, he noticed a thin stream of smoke rising from the front of the van.
Och.
He didn’t have long to get where he was going in the bullet-riddled van. That much was clear.
This is all Alain’s fault. That wee French—
Broch’s jaw creaked open as the clouds darkening his mind parted and the beam of an idea shone down.
That’s it. It was all Alain’s fault. He was the one who had called these men.
Alain knows them.
He needed to get back to Las Vegas before the van died.
Broch pressed the gas and the thin stream of smoke escaping the front hatch billowed, pouring from the seals. The engine shuttered and shut off. Broch tried the key and the engine made a dry coughing noise.
He wouldn’t be taking the van anywhere, anytime soon.
He dropped his head to the steering wheel.
Shite.
Chapter Seventeen
Broch stood on the side of the road with his hands on his hips, staring across the desert landscape. The merciful sun had decided to dim its glaring brilliance, and in the dying light he could see the glow of Las Vegas in the distance.
But he was no fool.
Walking across the desert would be the death of him, sun or no sun. The terrain appeared treacherous and his throat already cracked with thirst.
Somewhere during the last hour he’d lost the phone Catriona had given him, so he had no way of calling the drivers who always came to his aid back in Los Angeles.
The black car with Catriona and Mo inside had headed in a direction parallel to the glow of Las Vegas, but he suspected the road curved towards the city soon enough. Broch reasoned Volkov had to be taking his hostages back to Vegas, because he couldn’t fathom people had built more than one town in the middle of the godforsaken sea of sand and rock around him.
He walked in the direction the black car had driven. Best to put some distance b
etween himself and the van with the three bodies inside. He didn’t understand every law of the land, but Catriona had made it clear to him that killing people wasn’t something to be taken lightly, even in self-defense.
In the heat of the moment, he’d forgotten that bit.
A thumping beat thrummed in Broch’s chest.
My heart? Na…
Music reached his ears and he realized the beat belonged to it. He heard the vehicle before he saw it. Turning, he saw a car headed in his direction. The music grew louder as it neared.
Broch raised a hand and the car slowed, pulling to the side of the road a few yards in front of him. As it passed, he saw the female driver’s head turning, as if she were arguing with other people in the car.
Broch jogged to the vehicle as the back window lowered and the music swelled louder. A jumble of screeching voices called to have the music turned down and it dropped until he could hear little more than the driving beat.
There were four middle-aged women in the back of the car staring at him, their eyes wild, teeth flashing as they giggled. Their faces were painted with more makeup than Catriona wore, but less than he saw on the actresses wandering around the studio lot every day.
“Hey there, sexy,” said the woman in the back seat closest to him. She reached up and fingered the scarf still dangling from his neck. “Need a ride?”
“Is that a Modacious scarf?” asked another woman.
“Why would he be wearing a Modacious scarf?” asked another.
The women’s voices melted into giggles.
“Are you a stripper?” called the woman sitting in the passenger seat, her body twisting to better peer at him.
Broch recalled the billboard he’d seen of the scantily clad women. Catriona had referred to them as strippers. He glanced down to be sure his clothing hadn’t shifted during his struggles. He appeared properly covered.
“Na. Ah’m nae a stripper. Ah need a ride—”
“Ooh! I volunteer!” said the girl farthest away from him in the backseat. The others hooted and held up plastic cups, clinking them together with a dull plastic tick, liquid sloshing.
“You’re spilling!” screamed the driver.